Chartered Land Act postponed

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A controversial act affecting Native land management will not be going to Ottawa any time soon.

The First Nations' Land Board has decided to keep the First Nations Chartered Land Act from proceeding to the House of Commons for first reading until misinformation about the document can be cleaned up, the board's chairman said.

"We're revising the act," said Westbank First Nation Chief Robert Louie. "We've got some revisions that, I think, are going to correct a lot of the misunderstandings that have been generated there."

Several Native groups across Canada are opposed to the legislation, including the Assembly of First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the Coalition Against First Nations Genocide. The proposed act is a direct threat to First Nations' Aboriginal and treaty land rights, opponents claim.

Strong opposition to the document by many First Nations people has arisen over the notion that the act will result in the loss of reserve lands, he said.

"Some people have suggested that the mortgaging of lands will somehow take it out of the status of reserves. What we're doing now is having clauses inserted into the legislation to make it very clear that the lands can never be lost. It's already built into it as it is now, but most people don't read it that way, don't understand it that way."

Under the option act, a First Nation would develop and adopt their own land charters according to their own specific needs. The authority to manage land would include the power to grant any rights or interests, subject to limits preset by each First Nation.

The federal government's fiduciary responsibility to First Nations communities would remain intact because the Crown would still hold legal title to the chartered lands.

The western Canada-based coalition has charged, however, that the act is an Ottawa-initiated move that, combined with other bills over land and resources, taxation and self-government, it will extinguish First Nations rights entirely.

"It wasn't a case they're being concerned about misunderstanding," said coalition spokesman and Penticton Indian band council member Stewart Phillips.

"It was they're being concerned about opposition. They will need the acceptance of the people. Certainly eight people don't have the right to make the decision for me and my children."

Additional resistance has also arisen from chiefs in Ontario. At a meeting in Toronto two weeks ago, many of the province's 130 chiefs denounced the act as a threat to Native sovereignty and labelled some land board members, "Ottawa's puppets."

But no one is a puppet, said Louie. The act was designed by Natives to help Indian governments get out from under the Indian Act, which currently requires federal approval for many routine land-management procedures.

Confusion also exists over the implementation of the act, Louie said. At the Toronto meeting, a number of chiefs were handing out copies of resolutions opposing the act that their own bands had already passed.

"Some people think that this is national legislation that will have an automatic impact on everyone immediately," he said. "That's not the case. It's always been optional, it's always been band-specific."

The act was designed for the nine bands already operating under Sections 53 and 60 of the Indian Act, a spokesperson for the Department of Indian Affairs' Indian Act Alternative Group said. Land management authority would only be granted to certain bands.

Adding the word 'specific' to the name of the act, making it the First Nations Specific Chartered Land Act, might also make it clear that the document is not for everyone, Louie said.

As it is, the act will not be submitted to the House of Commons for at least six months, possibly a year, he said..